Internet Nostalgia

[Medusa]

Let's use this thread to talk about things we remember from "back in the day" on the net!

Did you use Napter? Remember the dancing baby? Do you sometimes miss the screech of the dial-up modem? Every use usenet?

(and here is where I admit I never knew the baby was known as the "oogachaka" baby )

[Girl_On_Fire]

Back when we thought an hour to download an album was FAST!

[dixie]

Back in the day, THIS was my internet....




I built webpages on the original Tripod site (and geo-somethingorother) with this darn thing. I was a teenager and ran multiple snail mail pen pal websites. I also was a WebTV forum-aholic.

At the time, my parents "didn't believe in" computers or other "nonsense fad items" so this way my first ever online experience. I loved it lol

I remember later on having a very clunky pc with the hella annoying dial-up AOL going on.

Both of which would kick me off any time someone called.

[Katniss]

Ha ha ha! The first thing I thought of was "All Your Base." I thought it was sooo cool when I first saw it.

Katniss~~(hated the dancing baby though, and never watched Ally McBeal either)

[Dutch Leonard]

I have an All Your Base T-Shirt!

I got on the internet in 1999 and the first thing I did was download Seti@Home. I wanted to help find ET. This lead to participating in many other distributed computing projects and also to building computers that were dedicated to these tasks.

My first computer was a 500 MHz Pentium III Gateway. It was so exciting when dual cores came out and then quad cores and then hyper-threaded quad cores. I learned about overclocking and started to learn to code. Francois Piednoel talked to me at Seti@Home. The electric bill started getting too high and the drama of the Seti@Home message boards became burdensome. I gave up distributed computing.

I am also nostalgic about newsgroups. I used to participate in several that were dedicated to television shows. I remember the Andromeda group in particular.

[Chancie]

i got online in about 1995.

I bought a new computer when I started graduate school and

It came with a disk to install Prodigy.

My first email address was a randomly generated list of characters @prodigy.com.

I played a lot of Tetris when I should have been doing research, and

I would dream about those shapes falling.

At some point I discovered a free download for Quake, and

I would play it a lot and I would get kind of flinch-y, and

I would delete it from from my computer.

I would download it again, and delete it again.

Eventually I learned how to play in 'god mode' and

I got way too familiar with the geography of the game.

I didn't know that many people with email addresses in 1995, but

I had a lot of fun corresponding.

I made terrible mistakes all the time, like

I sent a romantic email meant for my ex to her whole family.

Once I cc'ed my ex's mother in an email where I was talking about her.

She was always very nice to me and

All I was repeating was her strong opinion about how to use ellipses correctly.

[JustBeingMe]

I miss the sound of AOL dial up............LMFAO that was my first internet experience.......and yeah everytime someone called me, it would kick me off..........that got annoying.

[jac]

I kinda miss the old dial-up sounds and AOL's "you got mail"

I remember being told of Google and me asking, "what's a google?"

I never got knocked off line because my mommy made me get a second phone line in the house... lol.

[diamondrose]

the good ole sounds of the dial up and the jokes of picking up the phone

1981 BBC Micro computer...my bro also had a Sinclair ZX81 to play around with. No consumer internet as such.

1986 Mac classic computer (the ones with the really small screens). No consumer internet to speak. Getting involved with the AI guys up at Lancaster Uni at the time was great fun.

1997 Power Mac clone and still on dial-up. First BT internet address but so few folks I knew had email. Remember the Netscape browser?

2000 iMac Blueberry and slow, but improving internet...it was enough to find some entertainment with like minded musos and artists.

2002 Much improved internet access with broadband and launched m'self at a lesbian chat room which was much fun for a while back in the day of visiting all round the country.

Look how far technology has come in just few short years.

[pajama]

I can remember clicking to load a page.....


going and making dinner.....


And it might be done when I would get back.

[VintageFemme]

I was always having to delete older music for newer music because there just wasn't enough space on my much loved Gateway. I remember the day it arrived UPS ... ALL those boxes! LoL And too, the lovely AOL 'You've Got Mail' after the happy dial up song =)

[Princess]

Originally Posted by dixie

Back in the day, THIS was my internet....




I built webpages on the original Tripod site (and geo-somethingorother) with this darn thing. I was a teenager and ran multiple snail mail pen pal websites. I also was a WebTV forum-aholic.

At the time, my parents "didn't believe in" computers or other "nonsense fad items" so this way my first ever online experience. I loved it lol

I remember later on having a very clunky pc with the hella annoying dial-up AOL going on.

Both of which would kick me off any time someone called.

This was my first shot at actually having internet in the home..my parents werent big fans of the computer so until then I really had only used my besties computer...for what its worth it was pretty awesome at the time!

[s0litude]

I remember the time BEFORE the internet, days of the telnet and getting on the computers in college in 1992, having to remember that "638" was the "room" where the lesbians were. Floating around actually LOOKING for channels where like-minded individuals were... and still chatting all night, jumping in the shower, grabbing my books, and running across campus to my classes.

I still recall an all-night chat session, getting the dates wrong on a presentation due, and as a last-minute solution, telling my friend, "Fuck it. You know what I'm doing for my class presentation?" I said nothing more; I just grinned at her and threw my bag over my shoulder.

I went to class and when the professor asked me what my presentation was, I told her: "Me." I OUTED myself to my class, let them ask questions, assured them that nothing they asked would be inappropriate or rude as long as I saw they were making a sincere effort to be courteous and respectful. It was great.

The professor told me later it was one of the boldest things she'd ever seen a student do-- this was 1992. I did ace the presentation.

cojones > preparation

Sometimes, not always, being a slacker can give you some great ideas. Let's hear it for the late-night chatters-- even BEFORE the time of "Chat Rooms"! LOL!

[Medusa]

My yahoo email address is almost 16 years old


Remember Lycos? GoFetch? Infoseek?

What about Jennicam?!

How about rotten.com?



Talk to me about what your first 6 months on the net looked like! Did you surf for hours? Chat endlessly? What was the thing you found online that blew your mind way back then?

[durrrrrrrr]

when that first came out, me and my brother in law would practice this until we had the moves down to a T. My sister thought we was weird. go figure...lol

[aishah]

not exactly internet nostalgia but...ascii oregon trail on floppy disks. 2nd grade. best thing ever.

we got a computer when i was 8 or 9 i think and i don't remember what my first few months on the internet looked like...but there were a bunch more sites for kids that age then and there was one just for kids where you could make webpages. that was where i first started learning how to code

the cuppycake song...my favorite next to the dancing baby.

that nifty screensaver with the fish that you had to feed and take care of.

lycos and infoseek...and askjeeves! is that site even still around anymore?

my first or second email address (longest before i switched to gmail) was trippingonroses@comcast.net because my middle name is rose.

researching things my mom didn't want me to research...and also "researching" things i definitely had no business looking at

not that long ago, but when you had to be in college to join facebook. we learned how to join during my freshman orientation at florida state.

when you had to keep track of your own friends (online and otherwise) and didn't have facebook to do it for you!

[Princess]

Originally Posted by joyful albatross

not exactly internet nostalgia but...ascii oregon trail on floppy disks. 2nd grade. best thing ever.

we got a computer when i was 8 or 9 i think and i don't remember what my first few months on the internet looked like...but there were a bunch more sites for kids that age then and there was one just for kids where you could make webpages. that was where i first started learning how to code

the cuppycake song...my favorite next to the dancing baby.

that nifty screensaver with the fish that you had to feed and take care of.

lycos and infoseek...and askjeeves! is that site even still around anymore?

my first or second email address (longest before i switched to gmail) was trippingonroses@comcast.net because my middle name is rose.

researching things my mom didn't want me to research...and also "researching" things i definitely had no business looking at

not that long ago, but when you had to be in college to join facebook. we learned how to join during my freshman orientation at florida state.

when you had to keep track of your own friends (online and otherwise) and didn't have facebook to do it for you!

oregon trail ftw! i loved that game...recently i played oregon trail on a projector screen in a room full of nerds at a sci fi convention..hands down one of the best moments of the night

[Kobi]

Nostalgia? I was still using dial up until 2 months ago.

[DapperButch]

*Dial up sound...for sure miss it...you guys who got kicked off when another call came in? All you needed to do was turn off call waiting and then you were ok (and the caller just got a busy signal!).

"You got mail" sound...still have it. ;-)

Ally Mcbeal? I watched it. Fell in love with Portia de Rossi well before she ever came OUT and I ever knew she was gay. I had mixed feelings on the dancing baby. I liked it, but it freaked me out at the same time.

Fun topic.